A woman in man's clothes, Tipu Sultan Encountered his dream 13

Tipu’s dream of encountering a woman that seemed to me as if a handsome young man,

a stranger, came and sat down near However, the difficulty of accepting the validity of
the psychological space of others was an essential part of the cultures of slavery,
imperialism and colonialism in the non-European world (including the culture of
medicine and politics) of the 19th and 20th century. These societies were, by then, often
portrayed as being psychologically unsophisticated and lacking introspection; in essence
lacking reason, just as their earlier subjugation had been thought necessary as they
lacked faith.
A playful mood, talk to a woman
Well known Marhatta general who fought against Tipu Sultan in the war which the latter
waged against the Marhattas and the Nizam and in which he inflicted defeats on his
opponents. Tipu Sultan's success on the battlefield was not reflected in the terms of the
peace treaty, since he was keen on winning over the Marhattas to his side for the conflict
which he envisaged with the English owing to the mihtary preparations and diplomatic
moves of Lord Wellesley. Tipu Sultan and his analysis of his own dreams suggest quite
important interpretations of gender identity as the opposite, and that preoccupations
about the inferiority (or at least the un-understandability) of the so-called native mind in
psychotherapy and psychiatry, and in much of our discourse, needs to be reconsidered.
His dreams are an example of the psychological sensitivity and preoccupations of an
Indian contemporary of Franz Mesmer, Benjamin Franklin, Antoine Lavoisier and
display comparable sophistication and introspection. The urge to paint him as a
barbarian, as the jingoistic press of Britain was wont to do then, and many local
contemporaries now, may thus be misplaced. He was a man of his times, a warrior-king
and a philosopher-king, in a time of tyrants. It is quite anachronistic that the armies that
did defeat and kill him were acting on behalf of King George III, who, by then, was
most assuredly mad. The consequences of who the victor was, and who the vanquished,
and whether reason or madness prevailed in India is what we may need to come to terms
with, even now.